


I'll Sulk With You

by stammed_cleams



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen, Insecurity, One Shot, Sulking, WHERES! TOPHS! FIELD! TRIP, beach party, feel good, friendship fic, im so bad at tagging lmaoooo, its just some good friendship content guys, slight angst, the vaguest mentions of abuse i think but really vague, this friendship is so unexplored yall, wheres tophs field trip, zuko is traumatized
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:53:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24730009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stammed_cleams/pseuds/stammed_cleams
Summary: Zuko takes off from another beach party, only this time, he has no reason to feel like it's a waste of time. Toph joins him and tells him about some things they have in common.
Relationships: Toph Beifong & Zuko
Comments: 7
Kudos: 185





	I'll Sulk With You

**Author's Note:**

> hey hey hey party people whos ready for some more atla content??? i know i posted the first chapter of that poly fic but i am NOT sure where thats gonna go so dont get too excited about that........... BUT i DO have some plans for my Big Hit(TM) And The City Dreamt Of Me. sooooooooooo......... :eyes:
> 
> anyway heres a little feel good bc toph and zuko are a Tragically Unexplored Friendship

Zuko sat with his back against the cool, concrete wall on the hot summer day. His hair was down for once and was now long enough to fall around his shoulders, the royal hairpiece in his right hand, propped up against his knee. Outside, the rest of the group had started one of their classic beach parties, watermelon juice, sand castles, swimming tricks. And he was inside, ignoring them, refusing to do anything fun. Again.

He picked a pebble up off the ground and chucked it at the opposite wall, watching it bounce back to the floor and roll back to his feet. Voices outside shouted with exuberance and roared with laughter, and with a familiar bitterness building in his gut he picked it up again and threw it harder, towards the wall. About an inch away from it, it froze in the air, clattered to the ground, and rolled to his feet. Zuko stared in confusion until a smiling and sea-soaked Toph stepped through the door. 

“That would have hit you in the eye, you know,” she told him, slightly amused. 

“Toph…” Zuko exclaimed, looking up at her. “What are you doing here?”

She stepped forward and took a seat beside him, folding her knees up in front of her. “Well, last time you wandered off during a beach party you did kind of go crazy and attack Aang,” she admitted, “I just wanted to make sure you weren’t in here scheming.”

Zuko looked down shamefully at that, grating his teeth. Oh yeah. “Right…” he muttered, “I just needed a moment away from it all, I guess.”

Toph allowed the silence to linger for another few moments, before grinning and punching him in the arm. 

“Ow!”  
“Come on, hothead! What’s going on, talk to me.”

He growled, rubbing the new bruise on his upper arm. “Why don’t you just go out and have fun with everybody else?” he asked sharply, “Everybody sounds like they’re having a pretty good time out there, go ahead. I’m fine.”

“Actually, everyone’s been asking where you were.”

Zuko softened at that, casting a look up at her. “They are?”

“Yeah,” she said with a smile. Head tilted down, the look on her face softened. “Hey, I know it feels like what you’re going through is something only you know how to deal with, but believe it or not, I felt it too.”

“What do you mean?”

Toph stretched her legs out forward, and leaned back on her hands. “For my entire childhood, I was kept a secret to the world by my parents, who thought I was helpless,” she explained, “I did what I was told, and occasionally, I snuck out to do these crazy Earthbending competitions. But I could never stay out long enough to get to know anyone, or to spend any significant time with another person. Then, suddenly, everyone wanted me around to do stuff and be around them! I had a hard time dealing with it, too. You should have seen the early days. Katara  _ hated  _ me.”

Zuko smiled at that - that much, at least, he could relate to. He cast a look at the wall that he could hear the laughter through, the concrete that faced the beach. “I think Katara hates everyone when they first join the group.”

“Yeah, that might be true,” Toph giggled.

“I just don’t understand why they invited me!” exclaimed Zuko, with an irritated gesture, “They always joke about how humorless and serious I am, who thought it was a good idea to invite me to a party?”

“Yeah, well, that’s the hard part.”

He looked back at her. “What is?”  
“You never really get to know why your friends like you,” she said honestly, “When I first joined, I stayed away from everyone else because I knew that I was no fun to be around. But they wanted me around anyway. When we were invading the Fire Nation, Sokka and I nearly fell off one of the blimps, and he caught my hand and stopped me from falling. Over and over he protected me. And I thought, why would anyone care about me like that? What did I do?” she looked pained for a moment, pulling her knees to her chest, “And… I still don’t know. But I think having friends is about having faith in the fact that they see parts of you that you never will, and that’s okay. You don’t have to deserve love, Zuko. If anyone tells you that you have to jump through hoops for it, it probably means they didn’t really love you to begin with.”

Zuko looked at her for a long while, and then looked back to the wall. He pulled his knees closer into himself, and put his head down. He considered the months and years he spent trying to hunt down Aang so that his father would love him. Then he thought about betraying Iroh, casting him aside like garbage, and coming home to nothing but sympathy and affection. He looked at Toph. “You’re wise for your age,” he told her, “I can see why my uncle likes you.”

She grinned. “Thanks,” she said with a shrug, “I try.”  
Zuko was quiet for a moment, before saying, “Are they really waiting for me to get out there?” he asked.

“They’re talking about it right now.”

“You can hear them?”  
“Um, greatest Earthbender of all time, remember?” 

“Right…” Zuko hadn’t even noticed the fact that they had gone quiet, but sure enough, the elated cries had switched to muted conversation. Even straining to hear it he could barely hear speech at all, much less what they were saying, or even who was talking at any given time. “What are they saying?” he asked. 

“Sokka’s frustrated that you keep storming off,” she said. 

He sulked. “Oh.”

“But Katara’s on your side,” Toph went on, which made him look up hopefully, “She says that you’ve been through a lot and that everyone should be more patient with you. That you can stay inside if it makes you more comfortable.” Zuko smiled bashfully at that. Wow… things couldn’t have been more different from when they first met, he thought. Toph went on, “Aang is saying that you’re not really a beach party guy, and that maybe next time they could go have tea at the Jasmine Dragon, and that maybe you’d want to hang out more there.” Toph grinned a little wider. “Sokka says, ‘he  _ does  _ make really good tea’.” 

“They really said all that?” Zuko asked hopefully.

“Would I lie to you, hothead?”

He smiled for another few moments, pink coming into his cheeks. An unfamiliar feeling, being wanted, but a nice one nevertheless. The self-sacrifice, life-saving part of friendship was something he’d had plenty of time to explore and appreciate before they’d defeated his father, but all this wanting him around just to have him around was very unfamiliar. He was slowly getting used to being loved. But being liked couldn’t have been more different. “You really think they want me out there even if I don’t do anything?” he asked.

“Of course I do! That’s what I’m trying to tell you!” Toph said through a grin, “It’s a beach party! People who like to have fun and kick their feet up can do that, and people who like sulking can just… sulk around some other people. Now come on, hothead, I’ll sulk with you.” Toph stood up, and started heading towards the doorway, and Zuko joined her. 

By the time the two of them walked back out to the beautiful, sunny beach, Sokka was fixing the side of his unimpressive sand castle closer to the water and Katara was irritably sitting beside him with her head in her hand waterbending the tides away from his construction. Suki was playing with Momo in the sand, laughing as he scurried up her arms, and Aang was doing great, fish-like spirals through the ocean with various forms of bending in a frantic attempt to impress Katara, who did, admittedly, look impressed. As soon as the two of them stepped back out, Aang spun out of the water and landed dry on the sand. “Guys, look, Zuko and Toph are back!” he exclaimed. 

The rest of the group bid them warm welcomes, throwing their arms up in celebration. “Zuko, what’d you take off for?” asked Sokka, “Me and Suki were talking about whether firebenders can make glass or not and we wanted you to settle the tie. They can, can’t they?”

“Um… I guess I’ve never… seen anyone do it,” Zuko said neutrally. 

“See Sokka?” Sukki spoke up while petting Momo’s ears, “It’s not just fire, it’s a whole process, you can’t just blast sand into glass!”  
“Well- but- he didn’t _say_ that!”  
Aang scurried up the beach. “Hey guys, you wanna come swimming with me?”  
“No thanks,” Toph said, “I’m not really a big fan of water. I think I’ll just laugh at Sokka’s sand castle. Maybe I’ll even fix it for him if I pity him enough.”

Sokka cast her a bitter look as he tried again to reconstruct his upper left tower. 

“Zuko? The water’s really nice!” Aang went on. 

“Um, no thank you,” he said, raising a hand. 

As Toph and Sokka bickered over the quality of his sand castle (with Sukki rapidly switching sides), Zuko sat down flat on the ground. Katara took a break from laughing at Toph’s fitting insults for Sokka’s castle and begging Aang to take a turn waterbending the sea away to cast Zuko a very knowing look, kind and maternal. Encouraging. Soft enough that no one could hear, she said, “Thanks for coming out.”

Zuko didn’t answer that, just smiling at the sand. It was a strange way to be at a beach party. While the rest of them played and flirted and built sand castles and swam and drank Zuko just stayed exactly where he sat, playing with the sand and watching all the others. Cutting loose was something you had to be taught - that was something most people didn’t know. Zuko didn’t know how to jump into the fray and kick back and party. But as time went on smiles were cast at him, people asked him questions, they pulled him into inside jokes. And nothing was asked of him. After getting tired of picking on Sokka, Toph took a moment away to plop down next to Zuko where he watched the rest of the group. 

“Is the shifting sand throwing me off,” she said in a whisper, “Or is that a little smile on your face?”  
Zuko cast her an embarrassed look, before recalling there was nothing _wrong_ with smiling. And he was. He hadn’t even noticed. He leaned back on the sand, letting the sun hit his face, listening to the voices of his friends. “Thank you for convincing me to come out, Toph,” he said sincerely, “I’m glad I did.”  
“Hey, no problem, hothead,” she said, “You want me to grab you a watermelon juice while I’m up?”  
Feeling childish, he nodded.

“You got it!” she exclaimed, and punched him in the arm again, leaving him rubbing the new bruise again as she stood up and headed back to the group. 


End file.
